12 Days of Christmas: iTunes Gift Card

Friends, dear friends, welcome to the very last in our marvellous 12 Days of Christmas series here on Pocket-lint. We’ve been bringing you hit after hit of solid gold gift ideas but today is the oh so sad end to all the fun. Yes, if you ain’t found it by now, then you’re in trouble or you really don’t know your giftee at all.

If that’s the case, then this final crack of the whip and it's going to be your saviour. It is the absolute guaranteed, fish in barrel, one size fits all solution to your problem and it’s called the...

iTunes Gift Card

They do. There’s no two ways around it. You might not be into all of them but guaranteed you like one of the above or you’re basically not a human being.

You can spend as much as you like

With denominations of £15, £25, £50 and even the odd £100, you can pretty much work this gift up to whatever value you think is appropriate. The downside, of course, is that your giftee will know exactly how much you spent on them. Just a shame there’s no £3 token for secret santa purposes.

You don’t have to think about it

There’s a lot of presents to buy each year and, if there’s one you can tick off without having to lift a grey cell, then so much the better. This is that gift. Don’t be afraid. Just let go.

They don’t expire

As far as we can see, there is no use by date on iTunes Gift Cards. They don’t go bad, you don’t run out of time and, once redeemed, the cash amount will sit on your giftee’s iTunes store account for as long as they don’t spend it.

You get your full money’s worth

There’s no need for your giftee to worry about finding things to spend their voucher on of the right amount. You can spend every penny of these things and not have to worry about getting tokens back in change or anything silly that used to happen in those olden day shopping trips of the 80s.

You can buy limited edition ones

For example, right now with the whole Beatles on iTunes thing that happened, you can get some rather tasteful versions of the iTunes Gift Card with black and white shots of the Fab Four on them. You have to spend either £50 or £100 for the privilege but that’s collectables for you.

They’re easy to wrap

No need for cellotape or wrapping paper, this is simply an envelope affair. Lick, stick, job done. In fact, you can even do it while handing out the presents so long as you have something to blot your dribble with.

They’re fun to activate

It’s basically like getting a scratch card that you know is a winner. You get all the fun of removing the silver paper to reveal the code without the worry that you’ve just succumbed to the poor man’s tax. It’s also highly satisfying when you see the new mass of credit sitting in your virtual iTunes account.

They’re cheap to post

The other advantage of the above envelope wrapping system is that you can just mail the things for the price of a normal letter. That, in turn, means you don’t actually have to give this over in person removing the opportunity for your giftee to give you that blank look that says “that’s it?”.

It’ll definitely get used

This is not a gift that someone will open and never get round to using. At the same time, you won’t have to wait to see them out with it like some jumper or something to prove you did ok.

You don’t even have to be an iTunes user (for long)

Not everyone uses iTunes or even an iPod of course, but you can just buy the MP3s and play them on something else once you’ve done the shopping. Feel free to uninstall the Apple software afterwards as well.

You can’t get it wrong

At the very, very worst, your giftee can just shift them on eBay. They have an excellent resale value with only around £5 off the face price. Come to think of it, it’s not a bad place to pick them up either.

Dan's love affair with tech began in 1985 with his first computer, the Enterprise 128. After a psychology and zoology degree at university, a career on stage and screen he joined Pocket-lint in 2009. Dan has now moved on to pastures new.